I am the Founder of Community of Liberty, a chapter based organization committed to pursuing the art of living in liberty, a member of the Publication Committee of the Claremont Review of Books, an Advisor to TheGold StandardNow.org, and a juror for the Bastiat Prize for Journalism. I have just published with my co-author Ralph Benko the booklet, "The 21st Century Gold Standard: For Prosperity, Security and Liberty," now available as a free download at AGoldenAge.com. I bring to my columns an extensive background in the investment management business, including my experience as an equity portfolio manager, strategist, president of my former firm’s retail sales and marketing subsidiary and member of the parent firm’s management committee. As such, I have been a student and observer of the political/economy and its affects on markets, businesses, and my own business for more than 30 years.

US President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the US economy from the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, DC, August 8, 2011. Obama on Monday defended America's credit after Standard & Poor's downgraded its top notch debt rating, insisting the economy's woes were 'eminently solvable' with political will. Obama said he would table his own proposals for cutting the US deficit 'in the coming weeks,' saying the United States will always be a triple-A country and also urged Republicans to agree to tax hikes on the richest Americans. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

President Barack Obama’s inaugural address was notable for the rhetorical devices he used to at first embrace the founding principles of our God given, unalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, and then trash them with his claim that “individual freedoms ultimately require collective action.”

By so doing, President Obama follows in the tradition of the great Progressive Presidents, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson, who each were successful in undermining the very meaning of liberty, and by so doing, were each able to expand the scope and power of elected officials and elite public servants over the American people.

What follows is an interpretive translation of key sections of President Obama’s inaugural address to make plain his interpretation of the founding principles and his vision for the future of the American people. Words not in the original text are in italics. Deleted words are omitted.

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Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:

Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. To transform America into a fair and just society, we must reject the original meaning of those founding principles which elevate individual liberty over the power of the state. For history tells us that the American Revolution was a radical departure from the normal state of affairs in which those in power determined the common good, and individual liberty by necessity had to yield to the needs of society.

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Through it all, you, the American people never relinquished your skepticism of central authority, nor have you yet succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Your celebration of initiative and enterprise; your insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in your character. The manner in which you cling to these obsolete 18th century ideals is remarkable.

But we in the ruling class have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action, and therefore individual liberty must yield to the wisdom of those who are elected and appointed to positions of power.

For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. To meet the threats posed by the modern world requires a similar, unified response that elevates the needs of society over the liberty of the individual.

We can no longer trust a free people pursuing their God given talents to meet the challenges that lie ahead. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Nor, can they be trusted to coordinate their actions through the centuries old institution of voluntary exchange in free markets or through the voluntary organizations that are the bedrock of a civil society. You, the American people, are the most generous and compassionate people the world has ever known. But now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, as one people. We must reject the institutions of liberty and choose instead to bind our actions together through the coercive power of government. One nation, and one people acting with the discipline of a military organization, putting society’s needs ahead of the self, and willingly submit to the control from above, all reporting up to the Commander in Chief. This is the path forward.

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For you the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when only a shrinking few can figure out how to be successful under the growing weight of government and a growing number of you barely make it. You believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. You know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.

You know work will set you free. That is why I will not speak of the importance of economic growth and jobs. Individual success can be tolerated only to the point where she threatens the middle class by making more than $200,000 per year. The way forward is to empower those in government to take the income and property from those who are successful in the private sector and transfer it to those who have been successful in the political arena. Middle class prosperity must be limited and made dependent upon an ever more powerful government. By pursuing our battle against the challenges of the modern world, we can do for the middle-class what our war on poverty has done to the poor and vulnerable in our inner cities.

You understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. You know government employees must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher. But to transform our nation, our means will change, and so will our purpose: a society that rewards the effort and determination of every single American is neither fair nor just. To narrow the income gap between rich and poor, we must increase the power gap between those who govern and you, the American people. That is what this moment requires. Social justice is what will give real meaning to our new creed.

You, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. But our new creed means this can be true only to the point where these ideals conflict with the collective needs of your fellow citizens. We must empower a panel of 15 elite bureaucrats to make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care by rationing your care through long lines and government edicts. To sustain our new creed requires the easy choice of raising taxes to reduce the size of our deficit. We will do nothing to reform or modernize those programs that have taken care of the generation that built this country. And as the baby-boomers swell their ranks, we will force the America people to choose between breaking our promises to our senior citizens and imposing ever greater burdens on the generation that would build its future. For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn.

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I’ve been following your (the author’s) articles for a couple years now. No longer. This writing clearly exemplifies that you only hear what you want; you are literally putting words in our presidents’ mouth based on your interpretation of what you think he stands for. The fact that you “translate” his speech into your own words is simply a ridiculous premise for an article that presumably educated people will read. These people don’t need you to read what you hear. We’re educated. We understand what we hear and we read between the lines. We’re not robots. It seems that you are, however, reading from the “How to be a Ideological Terrorist” manual supplanted in your office by Tea Party jihadists. If you think you’re enlightened, you are sorely mistaken. Grow up.

Your responses are standard operating procedure for Progressives when they are criticized. Attack the messenger rather than respond thoughtfully to the message.

I invite each of you to point out specifically where you believe I have misrepresented President Obama’s meaning in my interpretative translation and why. That would be interesting and advance your and my understanding of the important issues raised by his speech.

Charles, I assume you would not have written what you wrote if you were better read. Frankly, although you have a platform, I would not find it worth my time to discuss the matter with you, given your preference for meaningless and mindless platitudes, unless I was sure you had other sources of knowledge than mine, from particular books, which could give us a common language. One potentially promising area of convergence might be a speech a discussion at the Davos conference by CNN with Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christianson. See http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/21/business/opinion-clayton-christensen/index.html

Other than that, I really am not interested in talking with you until you are better read, say have completed Nobel Laureate in Economics Stieglitz’s book, ” The price of Inequality. ” When and if you read that book let me know.

As a matter of fact, not only am I familiar with Tea party tenants and noticed they are pretty much identical to the John Birch party tenants. Ultra wealthy John Birch played people like you long before today’s billionaires played you. Watch and pay attention and you will the only people who benefit from the passion of people like you in reality is the ultra-wealthy. The want damage government for more tax breaks for themselves and to get an ever increasing share of the pie that their policies are maliciously shrinking. Whether you know it or not, you are a member of the John Birch / TEA / Billionaire party. IF you are not wealthy, you are just damaging your own future.

You are very hard on the president and progressives. Where it’s warranted and supported by facts, for the most part, I haven’t a problem with your critiques. They are usually very informative, whether I agree with them or not. At least you did your homework.

This article just seemed like you copy/pasted his speech and filled in what you think he actually meant, of course with your skewed view on what Socialism is. We don’t resemble anything remotely close to that and just because this president puts more focus on social programs, it bears little resemblance to actual, experienced Socialism. I’ve had many long discussions with individuals who lived in Soviet Russia, including my Advanced Economics Professor.

This is the entertainment take on the news all 24 hour news outlets ascribe to, which is why I don’t watch them. I read the news like an adult. I would fervently argue that any “interpretive translation” is a misrepresentation in itself, by definition. I’d expect this from Wolf Blitzer or Sean Hannity. That being said, it makes me smile that you follow your isolationist SOP and respond to individuals as a homogeneous group people instead of valuing our own unique differences.

Tenet: a principle, belief, or doctrine generally held to be true; especially : one held in common by members of an organization, movement, or profession.

Have to agree with Charles… despite the request for meaningful debate, there continues to be only defense mechanisms with attacks on perceived ignorance. Perhaps by directly disputing any given italicized interpretation with a reasoned argument against its validity, one may succeed in making a point to Charles about his inaccurate comprehension of the president’s platform. Otherwise, simply stating that he is Wrong with a capital W (albeit with slightly higher levels of vocabulary) is only helping to emphasize the nation’s inadequate critical thinking skills.

OK Jamie, see what you think of this. Obama wrote …”Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. “Immediately then Charles wrote “To transform America into a fair and just society, we must reject the original meaning of those founding principles which elevate individual liberty over the power of the state.” Now to correctly interpret and paraphrase what Obama really meant, it is this: Now , as at our founding, when this very bright and deep phrase was first stated “inalienable right to life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” making those real in real people lives requires never ending diligence and effort. It requires diligence and hard work as each new age comes to pass, and in each new situation. In the industrial revolution age and in the information age they are still our nation’s central truth but those two worlds in their details are very different from each other. There is no implication that those shinning word do not reflect an essentially eternal desire and truth, just an acceptance that in a real democracy, one which makes them most real in fact and in most citizen’s lives, will always require new effort and new skill by the citizens. So it is nonsense to say, as Charles did, that Obama meant “we must reject the original meaning of those founding principles which elevate individual liberty over the power of the state.” He has no supporting evidence what so ever. He simply did not say that, as anyone not in an Ann Rand drug addict delusion can clearly see. He said nothing of the kind, nothing whatsoever. This is absolutely true for all of Charles comments. He deliberately and probably maliciously misinterprets, mostly through incompetence, however, what Obama actually said. So my original comment holds. For someone so disconnected from reality, so blatantly contemptuous of any intellectual integrity, there is no way to discuss with that person, unless they are well read enough to at least have a common vocabulary to wean them from their crazed addition to such delusions. Being addicted to such wackiness really does exclude you from any civilized conversation, and you should not expect to be invited to sit down and talk. Now, as a computer designer and computer design manager, I can tell you designing new computers take teams of hundreds of people to come to market. These teams need to co-operate and interface with each other smoothly and efficiently. Only narco-Ann Rand people, desperate for a delusion of power in this hard and difficult world, would deny most things of value, such as designing a better computer, is not done on a mountaintop alone. The mountaintop alone is a profoundly nutty idea. So Obama and nobody else wish for individuals to be deprived of liberty or the pursuit of happiness, in fact just the opposite, the best teams are composed of people passionate about their pursuits. But they are teams and together we are stronger than we are when fragmented and broken. A closer analysis of today’s society shows the most destructive force of individuals liberty has nothing to do with the government, but was caused by bankers and other rich who created the most unequal society this nation has seen in seventy five years. In fact the whole blame to government propaganda machine is just a clever ruse to take your eye off of the real villains. You need to read more and see more.